My Kirchner nightmare

Tue, 2009-07-14 11:33 — scottly

The shawl that I'm currently working is knit in two pieces and then joined in the center with the Kirchner (I'm never sure how to spell this word) stitch. I grafted 109 and stitches or is it twice that anyway it looked pretty good on first inspection but then I noticed a missed stitch that had receded down a couple of rows. I refused to panic. I picked up my crochet hook and worked the stitch back in place but then what? So I wove a length of yarn about 6" into the stitches arranging so it would come out at the stitch in question - picked it up and then wove another 6" of yarn into the piece going in the opposite direcition. I have no idea if this is the right thing to have done. I simply couldn't figure out how to go backward through the Kirchener stitches. I'm going to block it tomorrow night so if anyone has any thoughts on a better fix please let me know. I have to say that my patch job is very hard to spot but will it stay in place over time? Will blocking make it even stronger or less so?

Your dropped stitch fix makes sense, not to mention tagging the piece as hand made ("hand made" is a synonym for "priceless.")

HERE'S MY KITCHENER CRUTCH: Because I am easily distracted, have a brain that wanders with the best, and get wretchedly mixed up at the most inconvenient moments and do all these things at the same time overnovernovernover, I came up, so to speak, with this track-keeper for Lord Kitchener's brain twister:

Look down at the 2 needles holding the to be Kitchener-seamed stitches. You'll work with only the rightmost 2 sts on each needle in each time you Kitch.

Place a short length of bright, bigger WY (waste yarn) between the 2nd and 3rd sts of the first needle and carry the WY straight on between the 2nd and 3rd sts of the other needle. This separates those 4 sts (2-sts-on-2-ndls) from the rest of the work. Kitchener those 4 sts; this leaves only 1 st on each needle to the right of the WY. To prepare for the next Kitch event, move the WY over 1 st. That is, slip the WY out and re-insert it between what now are the "new" 2nd and 3rd sts on ea ndl. Couldn't be simpler. Brought my Kitchener batting avg up from .147 to .947, give or take. Best wishes.

Perhaps there needs to be another event at the next Men's Spring Knitting Retreat..."Leather & Lace Ball"..."Bound Off and Disciplined Dinner"...something along those lines with uniforms and knitted objects???

Striping and Strip Search
Cast On and You Can't Cast Off
Singlets For Single Men
Converting Flat Work To Round The World
Edging Your Man and Your Knitting
I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Patterned This Way
Every Home Needs A Sling...M1 or K2TOG
Beads, Feathers, Strops, Flails and Other Essential Tools
Creative Blocking

NNNoooo....I better not type in what I was just thinking. Let people's imagination fill in the gap. (Probably more interesting than my thought, anyway.) -- Books, knitting, cats, fountain pens...Life is Good.

I agree with MMario. I myself being the anal retentive person I am would have ran the repair thread all the way across the body of the work and then weaved it some length down the sides, but hey, that's just my natural paranoia talking. With what you did, if you're using a good animal fiber, the yarns natural stickiness will help take care of it. If you wanted, you could even during the washing/blocking, use your fingers and really mash the wet fibers in that area together. That will slightly roughen up the fibers more as in felting and help them "stick" to one another. I had a friend that did spot felting with one of those electric pedicure files. I remember her once doing such a repair and it held together great.

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